Tunisia’s Potential to Become a Regional Electronics Hub: Aymen Troudi Outlines the Path to a Credible Industrial Brand

Tunisia possesses significant assets to become a regional electronics hub. Aymen Troudi, Plant General Manager at TIS Circuits, outlines the necessary conditions to transform this potential into a credible and attractive industrial brand for investors.

In the competition for industrial investment, low setup costs or geographic proximity are no longer sufficient differentiators. International groups are seeking ecosystems capable of combining skills, infrastructure, suppliers, energy, certifications, and long-term support capabilities. Tunisia already holds several of these building blocks. Its current challenge is to assemble them to construct a clear and differentiated value proposition. This is the core of the "Tunis Electronics Hub" ambition, driven by sector players around Elentica. Created in 2017, this cluster brings together a significant portion of the Tunisian electronics ecosystem and is now working to structure a common dynamic.

For Aymen Troudi, the "Tunis Electronics Hub" concept is both "relevant" and "realistic," but its realization requires a clear vision, coordinated actions, and investments capable of strengthening the entire ecosystem. The priority is less about proclaiming the existence of a hub and more about building its attributes: developing skills, attracting higher value-added investments, enhancing industrial capacities, and improving conditions for investors.

Building a Country Brand Around Electronics

The stakes go beyond promoting a single industry; they involve evolving Tunisia’s international perception. The country can no longer present itself solely as a competitive production platform close to Europe. To increase its attractiveness, it must demonstrate its ability to host more complex electronic activities, support their development, and move up the technological value chains.

Building a "Tunisia" brand in electronics requires shifting from a sum of individual advantages to a collective promise: that of a competent, reliable ecosystem capable of creating greater value. Only under these conditions can the "Tunis Electronics Hub" become more than a slogan—it can become a genuine argument for industrial competitiveness.

Human Capital: The First Pillar of a Credible Country Brand

According to Aymen Troudi, one of Tunisia’s main advantages lies in its skilled workforce. He emphasizes the quality of available profiles, citing cases where investors have noted the difficulty of finding a similar talent pool in electronics in certain competing countries. This observation should change how Tunisia presents its industrial offer.

By focusing primarily on labor costs, the country risks reducing its positioning to that of a subcontracting platform. However, for Troudi, the opportunity also lies in the ability to attract high value-added projects and develop new technological skills. Yet, human capital alone is not enough. To become a true industrial destination, Tunisia must offer a complete ecosystem combining training, engineering, subcontracting, logistics, certifications, and energy availability.

To these skills is added another advantage: proximity to Europe. In a context of supply chain reconfiguration and a desire to reduce dependencies on Asia, Troudi considers Tunisia well-positioned to benefit from reshoring dynamics and the closer location of production capacities. The comparison with China should not be limited to labor costs. Troudi notes a relatively limited gap in certain operational profiles, which can be offset by logistical advantages. Where Asian supplies may take several weeks, proximity to European markets significantly reduces lead times.

The narrative must therefore change: Tunisia should not seek to be the cheapest destination, but the one that combines skills, proximity, responsiveness, and the capacity to execute complex industrial projects.

From Attractiveness to Investor Experience

An industrial brand is only credible if the stated promise is reflected on the ground. However, several vulnerabilities continue to limit the ecosystem’s effectiveness. Troudi specifically cites logistics, certifications (which remain unevenly distributed across the sector), and, above all, energy availability. For an industrialist, these dimensions are not secondary; they directly determine a site’s ability to produce, deliver, and grow.

Recognized skills and a favorable geographic location lose part of their value if investors subsequently face difficulties in shipping equipment, meeting certain certification requirements, or securing energy needs. Troudi mentions cases of investors who hesitated between Tunisia and Morocco. He believes that promotion alone is insufficient to convince them. It is necessary to welcome them, concretely present the ecosystem, and transform initial interest into an investment decision.

This logic also applies to targeting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). For our interlocutor, the value of an investment is not measured solely by the capital injected. It also lies in its ability to bring new technologies, develop local skills, and strengthen the existing industrial fabric.

The example of TIS Circuits, a subsidiary of the ALL Circuits group specializing in electronic board subcontracting, illustrates this point. The company is planning the construction of a new Industry 5.0 factory, with an announced investment of approximately €15 million. The project is part of a group whose capital includes Chinese investors, notably DBG Technology. For Troudi, this presence is also an opportunity. He highlights the strength of the Chinese industrial ecosystem, its investment capacity, and the competitiveness gains achieved, particularly regarding equipment.

The challenge for Tunisia is therefore not to pit European and Chinese capital against each other, but to leverage various international industrial networks to accelerate the upgrading of its own ecosystem.

Diaspora and Specialization: Expanding the Relays of the Tunisia Brand

The construction of an industrial brand can also rely on the Tunisian diaspora. For Troudi, skills established abroad constitute a resource that is still underutilized. The first step is to better inform them about what exists in Tunisia, value their career paths, and create regular spaces for exchange.

Beyond skills, these profiles have professional networks and direct knowledge of international markets. They can thus become relays for Tunisia with the companies and investors they work with. However, a strong industrial brand also requires more identifiable technological specialization. The electronics sector is thus seeking to broaden its positioning towards higher value-added activities.

Semiconductors are among the paths mentioned. Skills exist, particularly in design and certain prototyping activities, but moving towards larger-scale production would require further development of industrial capacities. Data centers follow the same logic of upgrading. Here again, Troudi calls for caution: the project remains an ambition, and its realization will depend notably on available energy capacity.

These examples show that building a Tunisian electronics brand cannot be limited to existing production. It requires gradually emerging new technological building blocks capable of differentiating the country.

From Ambition to Execution

The Competitiveness Pact for the 2030 Horizon must provide a framework for this transformation. According to Troudi, it includes 32 commitments, six of which are carried by private actors in the ecosystem, with a target of over 30,000 jobs by 2030. Its signature is an important step. But the real test will now be execution.

For our interlocutor, Tunisia must establish a governance structure capable of mapping a trajectory and monitoring its implementation over the long term. The dynamic initiated around the Pact must translate into visible actions, both for industries already established and for investors observing the country from abroad.

This presence must also extend to international markets. Troudi advocates for a more active economic diplomacy and a strengthened presence of Tunisian industrialists in specialized trade fairs to better promote the skills and capacities of the sector.

Ultimately, the construction of a Tunisian brand in electronics rests on four pillars: recognized skills, reliable infrastructure, high value-added investments, and readable technological specialization. Tunisia already possesses some of these assets. Its challenge now is to transform them into a coherent value proposition that investors can immediately understand and, above all, verify once on the ground. Only under these conditions can the "Tunis Electronics Hub" move beyond the stage of ambition, as an industrial brand is built less by what a country says about itself than by the skills it develops, the technologies it hosts, the investments it retains, and the experience it offers to those who choose to settle there.